Seminar to be held on Monday, June 3rd in ERC 115 at 12:00 pm.
This presentation draws on ethnographic research primarily conducted while I was employed as a regular production worker in a North Carolina meatpacking plant for sixteen months between 2009 and 2010. As part of a larger project that attempts to explain the character of social relations between Latina/o migrants and their chief counterparts in the workplace – African Americans – I trace the categories and meanings of shop floor racial talk with parallel attention to the diverse ethnoracial panoramas in Latina/o migrants’ origin countries. How are the terms …

Seminar to be held on Wednesday, May 22nd in ERC 115 at 12:00 pm.
To what extent is the French republican model still viable in debates over immigration and integration in France today?  Viewed from the perspective of the last thirty years, which saw the rise of a powerful anti-immigrant political movement, the Front National, one might conclude that immigration in postwar France has been raging out of control.  Yet despite the remarkable showing of the Front National in recent presidential elections, France has remained a relatively open immigration country, a tradition which dates from the middle of the nineteenth century.  …

Seminar to be held on Monday, April 29th in ERC 115 at 12:00 pm.

Will comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) pass in 2013? The momentum that has been building towards CIR, which accelerated with last November’s presidential election and has since grown even more with the recent introduction of the Senate ‘gang of 8′s” bill, has shown no signs of slowing down. As a matter of politics, the key question is whether there are enough votes in Congress? While there are no crystal balls to tell us how legislators will ultimately vote, the recent history of immigration politics in the U.S. provides …

Seminar to be held on Wednesday, April 17th in ERC 115 at 12:00 pm.
Research on immigration, educational achievement, and ethnoraciality has followed the lead of racialization and assimilation theories by focusing empirical attention on the immigrant-origin population (immigrants and their children) and effectively ignoring the third-plus generation (those who are US-born of US-born parents).  We depart from this orthodox approach by placing third-plus-generation individuals at center stage to examine how they adjust to norms that the immigrant-origin population defines.  We draw on fieldwork in Cupertino, California, a high-skilled immigrant gateway, where an Asian immigrant-origin population has established and enforces an amplified version of high-achievement norms.  The resulting ethnoracial encoding of academic achievement constructs whiteness as having “lesser-than” …

Thursday, April 11
12:30pm – 2:00pm
Social Sciences Building 101
Rogers Brubaker (UCLA) will present, “Language, religion, and the politics of difference”.
*Jointly sponsored with UCSD Department of Sociology

Thursday, March 7
12:30-2:00pm
Social Sciences Building 101
This paper is based on five years of ethnographic field research among a group of Latino fruit vendors in Los Angeles as well as interviews with their Mexico-based family members. It examines the influence of the sending community on migrant outcomes in the United States. For this population of migrants, I argue that the sending community and social networks structured around it can help to explain how migrants entered into and remained in the informal and high-risk work of fruit vending. In some instances, the exploitative nature of social networks structured around sending community negatively …

Tuesday, March 5 at 6:00pm
Hojel Auditorium, Institute of the Americas
UC San Diego
Two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases seem to send opposite messages about the hundreds of recent state and local laws regulating noncitizens. One decision upheld Arizona’s law imposing sanctions on employers hiring undocumented workers, while the other struck down many parts of that state’s notorious SB1070, designed to drive out undocumented people using a policy of “attrition through enforcement.” Where is the line between valid state assistance to the federal government and unconstitutionally establishing independent state immigration policies? What could be wrong with the states helping enforce the federal …

Seminar to be held on Monday, March 4th in ERC 115 at 12:00 pm.
Coming out of the Great Recession, slow economic recovery has U.S. communities seeking strategies that will grow jobs in the short term and improve standards of living over the long term. This talk focuses on immigrants in the labor force and their skills, an especially relevant topic given that debates about immigration policy reform have started.  How geographic regions can invest in the human capital and economic advancement of immigrants who are already living in their jurisdictions, to help boost short- and long-term U.S. economic growth, will …

“We asked for workers and families came:” Children, youth and families in migration

Friday, February 22, 2013
9am to 8pm (including dinner and cultural event)
University of California, Los Angeles
(385 Charles E. Young Drive, 1242 Law Building, Los Angeles, California 90095)
This conference draws together UC-wide faculty and students who study children, youth and families in relation to migration issues, broadly defined. Collectively, we want to address such questions as: How do migration experiences shape the experiences of growing up and raising children? How do current immigration policies affect families? How are the children of immigrants faring in educational contexts? What identities are they …

Thursday, January 31
12:30pm-2:00pm
Social Sciences Building 101
Veronica Terriquez (USC) will present, “The Political Socialization of Youth from Immigrant Families and the Role of Community-Based Organizations”.
Abstract: Advancing the literature on immigrant incorporation, youth civic engagement, and voluntary associations, this mixed-methods study examines the political socialization of youth from immigrant families. I contend that the barriers to immigrant parents’ political engagement limit their children’s political participation, unless children gain significant political exposure from community-based organizations (CBOs) or other non-family sources. Drawing on survey data from a representative sample of California’s youth population, my analysis demonstrate strong support for the top-down model of political …